title from nikita gill's "difficult damsels"

"Piper! With me!"

May's voice cut through a training room with expert precision. It took her two paces for every one of May's even though she was at least four inches taller than the Chinese woman.

"Grab your bag and meet me on the Zephyr in ten."

"Do we have a mission?"

"Of some sorts."

Piper didn't question that as she quickly moved towards the locker room. She was greeted by a face full of steam and a half-dressed Agent O'Brian. She moved quickly towards her locker—when May said ten minutes, she meant it, and had a habit of leaving people behind when they were late.

"May and I are flying out on mission, so I won't be able to make that aikido session tonight."

O'Brian was her only true friend on the operations team. She remembered him from the Academy. He had been four years ahead of him and had been particularly good at explosive disarmament and munitions. It was useful especially now because May avoided touching guns in general. O'Brian loved himself a gun, the bigger the better. (Piper was sure this had a commentary on the male psyche, but being the only female on the team—save May—she kept her opinion quiet.)

He was a sweet guy, overall one of those people that Piper's grandmother would have liked her to marry and settle down with.

"It's your time to make a move," he teased, toweling off his hair, "the two of you all alone, atop the clouds with no other witnesses."

"Shut up."

O'Brian smirked and threw a t-shirt on over his head, muffling his voice.

"Have a good mission, Velazquez."

She made it to the Zephyr with two minutes to spare to find May running the system checks. No one else was aboard, which made Piper more excited that she cared to admit. It was rare to get one on one alone time with May.

She usually trained the entire group as a whole except for a few individual lessons sprinkled in here and there. With both O'Brian and her in munitions, Jackson into organized hostage retrieval, and Hart and Chapman working in a pair, May often took trips alone being the only true extraction specialist on the base.

She quickly tied down the rest of her stuff before climbing into the co-pilot's chair.

Piper helped to set up her side of the cockpit, which was very little as May never let her do much of the navigating, before calmly folded her hands in her lap and tried her best not to fidget as the Zephyr buzzed into motion.

Her hands were bruised and scabbed over from a tussle with Jackson. He liked to pick on her during warm-ups, during drills. He knew about her…preferences. She was small and a woman, and queer, and not white and her list of disappointments to her older white colleagues seemed to always be growing.

"Problems with Jackson?"

May didn't look up at her. Her eyes were focused on the front of the sky as her hands carefully moved them around the plane's dashboard. Her voice didn't seem intrusive or demanding. It didn't even seem like she was asking if she was having problems…more likes May already knew it.

Piper's heart jumped a little bit and she forced her hands to still and fold back into her lap again, covering the picked at scabs.

"I'm used to it…from the Academy," Piper quickly supplied.

She wasn't the only girl in her class. It was far past the time when the Operations Academy has realized that perhaps tiny women had their place in the combat field. Small women could fit through smaller holes in the security fields. No one ever suspected a woman walking down the street versus a set of large muscular men in black camouflage. (Still, she was different from the tall, blonde operative like Barbara Morse that they all liked and expected her to be.)

"I used to put sugar in the water tank."

Piper blinked, and then broadly grinned.

"Wait, that was you?"

May shrugged and finally glanced over at the younger woman.

"Did it work?"

May smirked.

"Yes."

Piper leaned back in her seat. She knew Coulson kept extra bags of white sugar in the top cabinet of the second basement kitchen for when he baked late night cookies. Perhaps it would mysteriously go missing when they got back to the base.

The ride continued quietly until, "where are we going?"

"We're dropping off supplies to some old friends."

May was usually forthcoming with the information that she thought they needed. Not always all the information Piper wanted to be completely prepared, but enough to know how to be safe. The sky was foggy and though she liked being in the sky, the never-ending whiteness made her stomach queasy in a way that caused her to want to pick and pick and pick at the scabs across her knuckles.

Her mother always she said had anxiety problems, but Piper never believed in that kind of diagnosis. If anything, the Air Force gave her the ability to resist torture, to resist the fear of awkwardness that usually surrounded her.

They landed a few hours later on a strip in front of a beautiful grassy area and a tall, gleaming building.

"May!"

She was greeted by the door opening to reveal the ex-Commander of S.H.I.E.L.D. Maria Hill in jeans and a white tee shirt. Next to her was a medium sized black man that she recognized as Sam Wilson, one of the Avengers. (May could have told her that her old friends were the Avengers, she would have brushed her teeth in those few spare minutes.)

"Oh, good you brought them! Hello Agent Velazquez."

"Commander Hill."

Two giant crates of prototypes for new ICERS were at their feet.

"Sam Wilson" he said, extending a well-muscled arm towards her.

"I know who you are, sir," she said returning his handshake.

"Please, it's Sam."

Piper's immediately nodded, "noted, sir."

The man awkwardly looked towards May, who shook his hand with an eyebrow raise.

"We're working on it," she said with a shrug before helping to unload the crates towards the entrance of the Avengers Tower.

Piper stood nearby while Sam Wilson early took some practice shots in the yard and Maria was quietly chatting about the party that Pepper had planned for the coming months and how much she hated the dress code.

The doors opened Natasha Romanov—red hair cut short and wavy, sweater worn and loose—emerged from the building. She wasn't prepared for how normal she looked. Somewhat tired, and almost human?

Sam Wilson was still critiquing the chart of ICERS when May and Romanov embraced.

(Piper looked away immediately—it seemed only Coulson could touch May and break the glass barrier that seemed to surround the warrior. It reminded her Snow White in her glass coffin, only May wasn't dead, nor was she a damsel. And it seemed that it would take more than a kiss to break the spell of sorrow that seemed to follow the Asian woman like a corpse dragging behind her, silent and heavy.)

It was quick and intimate kiss on both cheeks. Romanov spoke something in her ear that made May's lip twist slightly and there was a soft discussion in what Piper thought was Russian.

Sam Wilson was watching them too but his voice continued a monologue on the ICER, like he was providing them a cover for their reunion.

The spell was broken when another group emerged from the open Tower doors and the night progressed on.

She was spoiled inordinately by Pepper Potts in a private room with sheets that had a thread count high than her salary and their welcoming party that was large. She eventually settled on a soft couch with a craft beer in her hand as others (famous others—Stark and Banner, what looked like the back of Steve Roger's head) milled around chatting and drinking.

"You could be a little more subtle."

Piper jolted forward, almost spilling her beer as Maria Hill emerged from the air around them without a sound and into her sight line.

"Excuse me?"

Her voice was too loud and her eyes immediately darted around (no one seemed to be looking her way) and took a bit of breath before speaking again.

"I—it's—I don't know what you mean."

There was silence; one Piper knew she wasn't going to win.

"Is it that obvious?"

Maria Hill raised her eyebrows in a way that was so like May that it took Piper aback. (Would she come to mimic her mentor like that?) The commander sat down on the couch and Piper tilted in her position to look at her.

"That you're head over heels for Melinda May? Yeah, pretty obvious."

Piper could feel her cheeks heat up a little and she took a large swig of her beer.

"Don't feel bad about, you're not the first and you won't be the last."

There was something odd and reminiscent in Hill's tone as she drank from her cup.

"But don't worry too much about it, it's not like she's gonna get rid of you because you want to sleep with her or anything. I mean if you try to make a move on her then she might—"

"I didn't say—"

But the twitch on the ex-Commander's lips made the girl lay back against the couch with a frown.

"It's not nice to fuck with people like that."

Maria just laughed.

They talked about S.H.I.E.L.D. and Piper's work in the Air Force before they settled into a comfortable silence.

"Do you think they know they're that beautiful?"

As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she regretted them, but the warmth of all the alcohol in her stomach helped a little to cover that up. Hill didn't look that surprised, but her eyes lingered May and Romanova's conversation.

"Yes, but not in the way you're imagining."

Piper's eyebrows dipped, but Hill continued before she had to ask what she meant.

"Natasha and May were raised in the intelligence business. They grew up knowing that beauty like theirs is nothing more than a weapon."

Something sharp like a razor blade settled in the back of Piper's throat and all the times that she heard the male agents in locker rooms, on the backend of the comms, talking about May, Morse, Romanova.

Maria slid her another beer without another word.

She cleared her throat, using the extra time to crack it open and take another sip.

"Any advice?"

Maria raised an eyebrow and leaned back on the couch.

"Don't call her 'ma'am'. She really hates that."

Piper felt all the blood rush to her cheeks and her hands came to brush the lip of her almost empty beer. Hill snorted and took another large sip of beer.

She met Hawkeye at the countered where there were bags and bags of chips lined up in fancy glass bowls that didn't seem to match the relaxed atmosphere of agents and beer. (She had noticed that every time no one was over in that direction that the bowls were being straightened by Pepper Potts.)

She caught the man staring straight at her mentor and she blurted out her observation without meaning too.

"She seems very comfortable with you," Piper commented, trying to sound casual, reaching for a handful of food. It made her uncomfortable to here among so many legends. It seemed odd to see them in such a natural, calm environment when she was so used to seeing most of them covered in blood and grime on TV screens and newspaper covers.

"Melinda?"

Barton raised his eyebrow and glanced back at the floor where Natasha and May were sitting. Their knees were brushing each other's as their lips rapidly moved in Russian. May's cheeks were warm and rosy and her eyes seemed for engaged on the woman in front of her instead of scanning her surroundings. It was the most involved Piper had ever seen the Chinese woman in a conversation.

"Is she not comfortable on the base?"

There was something else in that sentence—an underlying tone of threats and worry that Piper knew wasn't accurately directed at her.

She just shrugged.

"I shouldn't speak for her."

Barton looked at her face for a moment and Piper wondered if he was going to yell at her. Then his face moved, smoothly like ripples, into a broad smile and he laughed.

He clapped her on the shoulder.

"I like you, Velazquez."

Piper smiled broadly and accepted the bowl of Doritos he handed her.

"How is training with May."

"Hard."

Barton laughed, delighted, with tones of reminiscences in his vibrato. "Yeah, but you're never more prepared than with her voice in your head."

It was an odd turn of phrase, but she knew exactly what he meant.

After graduating from the Academy, she used to rely almost exclusively on her instincts. Growing up in a neighborhood with guns made her wary of the sound of breaking glass and breaking wood, but it made her reaction time damn good.

In just a few weeks of training with May, her instincts, which had gotten into trouble more than a few times, had been replaced with May's measured voice.

Triage, focus on the point of the bleeding. Don't panic—you are in control of your emotions. Strength doesn't come from size or muscle volume, it comes from accuracy and speed. Hit faster and only have to hit once.

"Did you train under her?"

His hand came to play with the bottom of his ragged coat. (Later in the night, she realized that that same coat was around Romanova's shoulders.)

"Nah, Mellie, Nat, and I all worked together on a strike team."

The way he said her name reminded Piper of the way that Coulson called "May" across the base to get her attention when he would return from a mission. (Such a short sound for such a large entity of a girl.)

She glanced over once again at the two women on the edge of the carpet. Maria had joined them and May had opened up her body language to include the younger woman into the circle of conversation. While the Chinese woman and the Russian both had hard liquor in their glasses, Hill seemed to stay with a handful of beer.

"I think she came to adopt us as the base grew. When Director Coulson ended up restructuring everything, no one else had the field experience, so she ended up being stuck with us."

He glanced back at the archer to find his eyes on May and Romanova as well.

"Nah, you wouldn't be here if she didn't like you."

"I'm actually not sure why we're here," Piper commented, realizing that after four beers, she was perhaps a little more buzzed than she realized. She quickly tried to backtrack, "not that, I mean—May said that we were going on a mission, but…"

Barton smiled at her discomfort.

"She wanted us to check you out I think," he said with a shrug, "May rarely takes on rookies. You want them to fit in with the family, you know. We're all a private bunch, Melinda included, and when she takes someone on for training, she bonds for life."

Something warm settled into the pit of her stomach.

"And, did I pass the tests?"

Barton chuckled and walked away.

Later in the night, they were all watching Natasha and May play Risk. Some had left for the night, leaving the rest of the party scattered between the floors, sofas, and the table where the two women were still currently battling on the board game.

Occasionally, May and Coulson were seen playing chess, but the game usually seemed friendly with them Director always chatting and chatting and usually failing miserably.

"This is going to take years before one of them caves or gets drunk," Tony's Stark's voice came from somewhere under the very expensive sofa sets.

"What are you suggesting, Stark?" Hill's voice was still strong despite her having twice as much to drink as Piper.

There wasn't even a pause before—"strip poker"—and Piper's eyes flew up from game and glanced between Maria Hill and her mentor. Were they serious—and how could she get out of it?

Until she realized everyone was indirectly staring at her, gauging her reactions. They were messing with her.

Her cheeks flushed even more.

Her eyes settled on May, who was the only one who wasn't looking at her embarrassment. The Chinese woman's eyes were carefully assessing the board game in front of her. All most too carefully.

"Leave my agent alone, Stark," was May's diffusing response, as her hands moved across the board before taking another shot that Barton has slid across towards her only minutes earlier.

The room's attention seemed to move off her immediately and Piper found herself feeling brave.

When May's next turn and Barton started to pour her another shot.

"Rules are after every turn you take a shot!" Barton declared, waving an unopened bottle of very expensive vodka from one of the kitchens.

It seemed that the Black Widow and the Calvary could drink everyone under the table and weren't trying to hide it.

Their hands brushed and May immediately glanced up. She was odd about physical contact, Piper would be a poor spy if she hadn't noticed the way that May sometimes jumped when people would suddenly try to embrace her.

(Not in combat though, somehow never in combat.)

A thank you was clear as she handed off the clear shot glass.

May's eyes seemed to analyze her for a second, like she wasn't sure if accepting the drink was some kind of trick, but after what felt like hours—milliseconds in reality, she knew it—May tipped back the drink without breaking eye contact and Piper knew they were on good terms and that the thank you was accepted.

She couldn't sleep in the luxury of the Stark Tower and found herself wandering the corridor restlessly.

Her feet found the doorway of one of the many gyms in the Tower. There were two tiny blurs on the mat. The lights were dimmed and, in the darkness, Piper would barely make out the flash of red that gave away the Russian spy and the lean black shadow of her supervising officer.

The way they were sparing wasn't friendly.

She could hear blows hitting skin that would leave black and purpling marks in the morning that they would both be feeling for days later. There was no stopping to teach skills or light and guiding hands correcting posture.

May would never go that hard with her. She inherently knew that. Other than the occasional bruise or stray blow, May would never intentionally land a hard blow to her person during sparing. She was far too controlled for that.

Romanova rolled to the side, hitting the mat with a stunning crack only to spin back to her feet, like a cat creeping back from a fall.

If Piper didn't know better, this would have been a fight to the death. There were no words being exchanged and the room had a quiet echo to it that seemed to surround everyone in a circular aura of cracks, hits, and tumbles. The way the blows had no mercy and the utter speed and concentration of both warriors was cruel.

But there was an intimacy under the ferocity, something akin to understanding, in both women's faces that Piper had never seen before.

So, she left.

She left the two legends their privacy that she knew they deserved but never seemed to get. This was something that was meant to the darkness.

May didn't mention it in the morning.

On the flight home, Piper couldn't help but pick at the scabs on her hands in the middle of the clouds.

Out of nowhere, May spoke: "ignorant men like to throw rocks."

"So, what I should throw them harder?" Piper's voice came out more desperate and shrew than she intended. A dribble of blood rolled down her hand like an itch she didn't want to smear.

May's hands paused on the dashboard of the Zephyr and the quiet that surrounded her for the briefest of a moment made her wonder if she misspoke. May's eyes seemed alight in the darkness of the sky and the LED lights of the plane's control board.

"Keep them and build your empire."